The present invention relates to integrated circuit amplifiers, and in particular although not exclusively the invention relates to a preamplifier circuit suitable for prescalers fabricated on high speed bipolar processes. The proposed circuit is also suitable as a differential clock (or data) buffer for ECL and CML logic, limiting amplifier, or LO driver for active mixer circuits etc.
The circuit technique was developed to minimise power consumption in the preamplifier of low voltage prescalers. In this application, amplification of low level RF input signals is required to establish clock drive signals suitable for driving the first divider circuits.